WE HUMANS have let loose something extraordinary on our planet - a third replicator - the consequences of which are unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

What do I mean by "third replicator"? The first replicator was the gene - the basis of biological evolution. The second was memes - the basis of cultural evolution. I believe that what we are now seeing, in a vast technological explosion, is the birth of a third evolutionary process. We are Earth's Pandoran species, yet we are blissfully oblivious to what we have let out of the box.

This might sound apocalyptic, but it is how the world looks when we realise that Darwin's principle of evolution by natural selection need not apply just to biology. Given some kind of copying machinery that makes lots of slightly different copies of the same information, and given that only a few of those copies survive to be copied again, an evolutionary process must occur and design will appear out of destruction. You might call it "design by death" since clever designs thrive because of the many failures that don't.

The information that is copied, varied and selected is called the replicator, and the process is well understood when applied to biology. Genes are copied, mutated and selected over and over again. Assemblages of genes are used to build vehicles that carry them around, protect them and propagate them. These vehicles - the lumbering robots, as Richard Dawkins calls them - are animals and plants, the prolific and exquisitely designed products of the first replicator.

About 4 billion years after the appearance of the first replicator, something extraordinary happened. Members of one species of lumbering robot began to imitate one another. Imitation is a kind of copying, and so a new evolutionary process was born. Instead of cellular chemistry copying the order of bases on DNA, a sociable species of bipedal ape began to use its big brain to copy gestures, sounds and other behaviours. This copying might not have been very accurate, but it was enough to start a new evolutionary process. Dawkins called the new replicators "memes". A living creature, once just a vehicle of the first replicator, was now the copying machinery for the next.

The idea of memes as a cultural analogue of genes has been much maligned, and most biologists still reject it. Yet memetics has much to offer in explaining human nature. According to meme theory, humans are radically different from all other species because we alone are meme machines. Human intelligence is not just a bit more or a bit better than other kinds of intelligence, it is something completely different, based on a new evolutionary process and a new kind of information.

The main difference between conventional theories and memetics is this: most biologists assume that culture and language evolved because they helped humans survive and pass on their genes, and that genes retain ultimate control. Memetics challenges that assumption. Although the capacity for imitation must once have been adaptive for the apes who started it, evolution has no foresight and could not have predicted the consequences of letting loose a new evolutionary process. Nor could it have retained control of memes once they began evolving in their own right.

So memes began to proliferate. What began as an adaptation soon became like a parasite - a new evolving entity that changed the apes and their world forever. Once memes were proliferating, individuals benefited from copying the latest and most successful ones, and then passed on any genes that helped them do so. This "memetic drive" forced their brains to get bigger and bigger, and to become adept at copying the most successful memes, eventually leading to language, art, music, ritual and religion - the successful designs of human culture.

This process was dangerous. Small brains are much more efficient if you don't have to copy anything, but once memes are around you cannot survive unless you do. So brains had to get bigger, and big brains are costly to produce, dangerous to give birth to and expensive to run.

There is also danger in what is copied. If you start copying anything at all then you might copy dangerous memes, like throwing yourself off a cliff or using up all your resources in pointless rituals. This creates an arms race between two selfish replicators - memes benefiting from brains that copy anything and everything; genes benefiting from brains that are smaller, more efficient and highly selective.

Either of these dangers might have finished our ancestors off, but they pulled through. The result was a compromise, with human brains being just about as big as our bodies could stand, and yet selective enough to avoid copying lethal memes. In the same way that parasites tend to co-evolve with their hosts to become less lethal, so memes co-evolved with us. Languages, religions, skills and fashions that began as parasites turned into symbionts. Not only do we get along with our memes now, we could not live without them.

There was also a cost to the rest of life on Earth. Wherever they went humans took memes with them, spreading agriculture and changing the landscape, obliterating some species, domesticating others and changing whole ecosystems. Then, much more recently, they began to build radically new kinds of technology, and the changes they effected dwarfed anything that had gone before. Was this just more of the same or something new?

In all my previous work in memetics I have used the term "meme" to apply to any information that is copied between people, including stories in books, ideas embodied in new technology, websites and so on. The reason was that there seemed no way of distinguishing between "natural" human memes, such as spoken words, habits, fashions, art and religions, and what we might call "artificial" memes, such as websites and high-tech goods. So on the grounds that a false distinction is worse than none I stuck to the term "meme". Yet an email encrypted in digital code, broken into tiny packets and beamed around the planet does seem qualitatively different from someone shaking hands and saying "Hi". Could there be a fundamental principle lurking here? If we ask what made memes different from genes, would that help us decide what would make a new replicator different from memes?

Putting it that way makes the answer easier to see. Memes are a new kind of information - behaviours rather than DNA - copied by a new kind of machinery - brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages - copying, varying and selection - are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?

There is a new kind of information: electronically processed binary information rather than memes. There is also a new kind of copying machinery: computers and servers rather than brains. But are all three critical stages carried out by that machinery?

We're close. We may even be right on the cusp. Think of programs that write original poetry or cobble together new student essays, or programs that store information about your shopping preferences and suggest books or clothes you might like next. They may be limited in scope, dependent on human input and send their output to human brains, but they copy, select and recombine the information they handle.

Machines now copy information to other machines without human interventionOr think of Google. It copies information, selects what it needs and puts the selections together in new variations - that's all three. The temptation is to think that since we designed search engines and other technologies for our own use they must remain subservient to us. But if a new replicator is involved we must think again. Search results go not only to screens for people to look at, but to other programs, commercial applications and even viruses - that's machines copying information to other machines without the intervention of a human brain. From there, we should expect the system to grow rapidly beyond our control and for our role in it to change. We should also expect design to appear spontaneously, and it does. Much of the content on the web is now designed automatically by machines rather than people.

The temptation is to think that technology we designed must remain subservient to us - but think againMemes work differently from genes, and digital information works differently from memes, but some general principles apply to them all. The accelerating expansion, the increasing complexity, and the improving interconnectivity of all three are signs that the same fundamental design process is driving them all. Road networks look like vascular systems, and both look like computer networks, because interconnected systems outcompete isolated systems. The internet connects billions of computers in trillions of ways, just as a human brain connects billions of neurons in trillions of ways. Their uncanny resemblance is because they are doing a similar job.

So where do we go from here? We humans were vehicles for the first replicator and copying machinery for the second. What will we be for the third? For now we seem to have handed over most of the storage and copying duties to our new machines, but we still do much of the selection, which is why the web is so full of sex, drugs, food, music and entertainment. But the balance is shifting.

The nature of evolutionary changes recorded by the fossil record has long been controversial, with particular disagreement concerning the relative frequency of gradual change versus stasis within lineages. Here, I present a large-scale, statistical survey of evolutionary mode in fossil lineages. Over 250 sequences of evolving traits were fit by using maximum likelihood to three evolutionary models: directional change, random walk, and stasis. Evolution in these traits was rarely directional; in only 5% of fossil sequences was directional evolution the most strongly supported of the three modes of change. The remaining 95% of sequences were divided nearly equally between random walks and stasis. Variables related to body size were significantly less likely than shape traits to experience stasis. This finding is in accord with previous suggestions that size may be more evolutionarily labile than shape and is consistent with some but not all of the mechanisms proposed to explain evolutionary stasis. In general, similar evolutionary patterns are observed across other variables, such as clade membership and temporal resolution, but there is some evidence that directional change in planktonic organisms is more frequent than in benthic organisms. The rarity with which directional evolution was observed in this study corroborates a key claim of punctuated equilibria and suggests that truly directional evolution is infrequent or, perhaps more importantly, of short enough duration so as to rarely register in paleontological sampling.

gradualism modes of evolution punctuated equilibria

Footnotes

*E-mail: hunte@si.edu

Author contributions: G.H. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. M.K. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.

Climate Revolt: World's Largest Science Group 'Startled' By Outpouring of Scientists Rejecting Man-Made Climate Fears! Clamor for Editor to Be Removed! Scientists seek to remove climate fear promoting editor and 'trade him to New York Times or Washington Post'

Wednesday, July 29, 2009By Marc Morano – Climate Depot

Climate Depot Exclusive

An outpouring of skeptical scientists who are members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are revolting against the group's editor-in-chief -- with some demanding he be removed -- after an editorial appeared claiming “the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established.”The editorial claimed the "consensus" view was growing "increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers.” The editor now admits he is "startled" by the negative reaction from the group's scientific members. The American Chemical Society bills itself as the "world's largest scientific society."

The June 22, 2009 editorial in Chemical and Engineering News by editor in chief Rudy Baum, is facing widespread blowback and condemnation from American Chemical Society member scientists. Baum concluded his editorial by stating that “deniers” are attempting to “derail meaningful efforts to respond to global climate change.”

The editorial was met with a swift, passionate and scientific rebuke from Baum's colleagues. Virtually all of the letters published on July 27 in castigated Baum's climate science views. Scientists rebuked Baum's use of the word “deniers” because of the terms “association with Holocaust deniers.” In addition, the scientists called Baum's editorial: “disgusting”; “a disgrace”; “filled with misinformation”; “unworthy of a scientific periodical” and “pap.”

One outraged ACS member wrote to Baum: "When all is said and done, and you and your kind are proven wrong (again), you will have moved on to be an unthinking urn for another rat pleading catastrophe. You will be removed. I promise."

Baum 'startled' by scientists reaction

Baum wrote on July 27, that he was "startled" and "surprised" by the "contempt" and "vehemence" of the ACS scientists to his view of the global warming "consensus."

"Some of the letters I received are not fit to print. Many of the letters we have printed are, I think it is fair to say, outraged by my position on global warming," Baum wrote.

Selected Excerpts of Skeptical Scientists:

“I think it's time to find a new editor,” ACS member Thomas E. D'Ambra wrote.

Geochemist R. Everett Langford wrote: “I am appalled at the condescending attitude of Rudy Baum, Al Gore, President Barack Obama, et al., who essentially tell us that there is no need for further research—that the matter is solved.”

ACS scientist Dennis Malpass wrote: “Your editorial was a disgrace. It was filled with misinformation, half-truths, and ad hominem attacks on those who dare disagree with you. Shameful!”

ACS member scientist Dr. Howard Hayden, a Physics Professor Emeritus from the University of Connecticut: “Baum's remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist's soul. Let's cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded? [...] Do you refer to 'climate change' instead of 'global warming' because the claim of anthropogenic global warming has become increasingly contrary to fact?"

Edward H. Gleason wrote: “Baum's attempt to close out debate goes against all my scientific training, and to hear this from my ACS is certainly alarming to me...his use of 'climate-change deniers' to pillory scientists who do not believe climate change is a crisis is disingenuous and unscientific.”

Atmospheric Chemist Roger L. Tanner: "I have very little in common with the philosophy of the Heartland Institute and other 'free-market fanatics,' and I consider myself a progressive Democrat. Nevertheless, we scientists should know better than to propound scientific truth by consensus and to excoriate skeptics with purple prose."

William Tolley: "I take great offense that Baum would use Chemical and Engineering News, for which I pay dearly each year in membership dues, to purvey his personal views and so glibly ignore contrary information and scold those of us who honestly find these views to be a hoax."

William E. Keller wrote: “However bitter you (Baum) personally may feel about CCDs (climate change deniers), it is not your place as editor to accuse them—falsely—of nonscientific behavior by using insultingly inappropriate language. [...] The growing body of scientists, whom you abuse as sowing doubt, making up statistics, and claiming to be ignored by the media, are, in the main, highly competent professionals, experts in their fields, completely honorable, and highly versed in the scientific method—characteristics that apparently do not apply to you.”

ACS member Wallace Embry: “I would like to see the American Chemical Society Board 'cap' Baum's political pen and 'trade' him to either the New York Times or Washington Post." [To read the more reactions from scientists to Baum's editorial go here and see below.]

Physicists Dr. Lubos Motl, who publishes the Reference Frame website, weighed in on the controversy as well, calling Baum's editorial an "alarmist screed."“Now, the chemists are thinking about replacing this editor who has hijacked the ACS bulletin to promote his idiosyncratic political views," Motl wrote on July 27, 2009.

The American Chemical Society's scientific revolt is the latest in a series of recent eruptions against the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming.

On May 1 2009, the American Physical Society (APS) Council decided to review its current climate statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. The decision was prompted after a group of 54 prominent physicists petitioned the APS revise its global warming position. The 54 physicists wrote to APS governing board: “Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th - 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today.”

Instead of debate, members are constantly subjected to your arrogant self-righteousness and the left-wing practice of stifling debate by personal attacks on anyone who disagrees. I think ACS should make an effort to educate its membership about the science of climate change and let them draw their own conclusions. Although under your editorial leadership, I suspect we would be treated to a biased and skewed version of scientific debate. I think its time to find a new editor. [...] How about using your position as editor to promote a balanced scientific discussion of the theory behind the link of human activity to global warming? I am not happy that you continue to use the pulpit of your editorials to promote your left-wing opinions.Thomas E. D'AmbraRexford, N.Y.

#

Baum's remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist's soul. Let's cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded? Do you refer to "climate change" instead of "global warming" because the claim of anthropogenic global warming has become increasingly contrary to fact? Howard HaydenPueblo West, Colo.

#

I was a geochemist doing research on paleoclimates early in my career. I have tried to follow the papers in the scientific literature. [...] I am appalled at the condescending attitude of Rudy Baum, Al Gore, President Barack Obama, et al., who essentially tell us that there is no need for further research—that the matter is solved. The peer-reviewed literature is not unequivocal about causes and effects of global warming. We are still learning about properties of water, for goodness' sake.

There needs to be more true scientific research without politics on both sides and with all scientists being heard. To insult and denigrate those with whom you disagree is not becoming.

Are you planning to write an editorial about the Environmental Protection Agency's recent suppression of a global warming report that goes against the gospel according to NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James Hansen? Or do you only editorialize on matters in keeping with your biased views on global warming?

Trying to arrest climate change is a feeble, futile endeavor and a manifestation of human arrogance. Humankind's contribution to climate change is minuscule, and trying to eliminate even that minute effect will be enormously expensive, damaging to the poorest people on the planet, and ultimately ineffective.

Dennis Malpass

Magnolia, Texas

#

I can't accept as facts the reports of federal agencies, because they have become political and are more likely to support the regime in power than not. Baum's attempt to close out debate goes against all my scientific training, and to hear this from my ACS is certainly alarming to me.

Edward H. Gleason

Ooltewah, Tenn.#Having worked as an atmospheric chemist for many years, I have extensive experience with environmental issues, and I usually agree with Rudy Baum's editorials. But his use of "climate-change deniers" to pillory scientists who do not believe climate change is a crisis is disingenuous and unscientific. [...] Given the climate's complexity and these and other uncertainties, are we justified in legislating major increases in our energy costs unilaterally guided only by a moral imperative to "do our part" for Earth's climate? I am among many environmentally responsible citizen-scientists who think this is stupid, both because our emissions reductions will be dwarfed by increases elsewhere (China and India, for example) and because the models have large uncertainties. [...] I have very little in common with the philosophy of the Heartland Institute and other "free-market fanatics," and I consider myself a progressive Democrat. Nevertheless, we scientists should know better than to propound scientific truth by consensus and to excoriate skeptics with purple prose.

Roger L. Tanner

Muscle Shoals, Ala.

#I would like to see the ACS Board cap Baum's political pen and trade him to either the New York Times or Washington Post.

Wallace Embry

Columbia, Tenn.

#

In the interest of brevity, I can limit my response to the diatribe of the editor-in-chief in the June 22 edition of C&EN to one word: Disgusting.

Louis H. Rombach

Wilmington, Del.

#

I am particularly offended by the false analogy with creationists. It is easy to just dismiss anyone who dares disagree as being "unscientific."

Daniel B. Rego

Las Vegas

#

While Baum obviously has strong personal views on the subject, I take great offense that he would use C&EN, for which I pay dearly each year in membership dues, to purvey his personal views and so glibly ignore contrary information and scold those of us who honestly find these views to be a hoax.

William Tolley

San Diego

#

I appreciate it when C&EN presents information from qualified supporters of either, and preferably both, sides of an issue to help readers decide what is correct, rather than dispensing your conclusions and ridiculing people who disagree with you.

P. S. Lowell

Lakeway, Texas

#

I am a retired Ph.D. chemical engineer. During my working years, I was involved in many environmental issues concerning products and processes of the companies for which I worked. I am completely disgusted with the June 22 editorial. I do not consider it to be very scientific to castigate skeptics of man-made global warming. [...] [Global warming fears are] not of particular concern because "the ocean is a very large sink for carbon dioxide." [...] The overall problem here is that there is already an abundance of scientific illiteracy in the American public that will not be improved by Baum's stance in what should be a scientific magazine. Theories are not proven by consensus—but by data from repeatable experimentation that leaves no doubt of interpretation.

Charles M. Krutchen

Daphne, Ala.

#

Please do not keep writing C&EN editorials according to the liberal religion's credo—"Attack all climate-change deniers, creationists, conservatives, people who voted for George W. Bush, etc." It is a sign of weakness in your argument when you attack those who disagree. [...] Your choice of terminology referring to skeptical scientists who don't toe your line as CCD, climate-change deniers, and putting them in association with Holocaust deniers, is unworthy of an editorial in a scientific periodical. Who don't you go head-to-head with the critics? Please don't keep doing this. Find a scientific writer for the editorial page. We get plenty of this pap from the mainstream media and do not need it in C&EN.

Heinrich Brinks

Monterey, Calif.

#

Your utter disdain of CCDs and the accusations of improper tactics you ascribe to them cannot be dismissed. However bitter you personally may feel about CCDs, it is not your place as editor to accuse them—falsely—of nonscientific behavior by using insultingly inappropriate language. The growing body of scientists, whom you abuse as sowing doubt, making up statistics, and claiming to be ignored by the media, are, in the main, highly competent professionals, experts in their fields, completely honorable, and highly versed in the scientific method—characteristics that apparently do not apply to you. The results presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which you call the CCD's "favorite whipping boy," do indeed fall into the category of predictions that fail to match the data, requiring a return to the drawing board. Your flogging of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change is not only infantile but beggars you to contribute facts to back up your disdain. Incidentally, why do we fund climate studies by U.S. Global Change Research Program if the problem is settled?

yCullman Program for Molecular Systematics, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, 10458-5126

Communicated by Daniel H. Janzen, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, May 27, 2009 (received for review March 18, 2009)

Abstract

DNA barcoding involves sequencing a standard region of DNA as a tool for species identification. However, there has been no agreement on which region(s) should be used for barcoding land plants. To provide a community recommendation on a standard plant barcode, we have compared the performance of 7 leading candidate plastid DNA regions (atpF–atpH spacer, matK gene, rbcL gene, rpoB gene, rpoC1 gene, psbK–psbI spacer, and trnH–psbA spacer). Based on assessments of recoverability, sequence quality, and levels of species discrimination, we recommend the 2-locus combination of rbcL+matK as the plant barcode. This core 2-locus barcode will provide a universal framework for the routine use of DNA sequence data to identify specimens and contribute toward the discovery of overlooked species of land plants.

Conflict of interest statement: Following the publication of Lahaye et al. (PNAS 105:2923, 2008), the process of filing a patent on DNA barcoding of land plants using matK was initiated by V.S., M.v.d.B., R.L., and D.B., but because of the lack of commercial interest the patent application was subsequently dropped.

We describe experiments using single-particle tracking in which mean-square displacement is simply proportional to time (Fickian), yet the distribution of displacement probability is not Gaussian as should be expected of a classical random walk but, instead, is decidedly exponential for large displacements, the decay length of the exponential being proportional to the square root of time. The first example is when colloidal beads diffuse along linear phospholipid bilayer tubes whose radius is the same as that of the beads. The second is when beads diffuse through entangled F-actin networks, bead radius being less than one-fifth of the actin network mesh size. We explore the relevance to dynamic heterogeneity in trajectory space, which has been extensively discussed regarding glassy systems. Data for the second system might suggest activated diffusion between pores in the entangled F-actin networks, in the same spirit as activated diffusion and exponential tails observed in glassy systems. But the first system shows exceptionally rapid diffusion, nearly as rapid as for identical colloids in free suspension, yet still displaying an exponential probability distribution as in the second system. Thus, although the exponential tail is reminiscent of glassy systems, in fact, these dynamics are exceptionally rapid. We also compare with particle trajectories that are at first subdiffusive but Fickian at the longest measurement times, finding that displacement probability distributions fall onto the same master curve in both regimes. The need is emphasized for experiments, theory, and computer simulation to allow definitive interpretation of this simple and clean exponential probability distribution.

Author contributions: B.W. and S.G. designed research; B.W. and S.M.A. performed research; S.M.A. and S.C.B. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; B.W., S.M.A., S.C.B., and S.G. analyzed data; and B.W., S.M.A., and S.G. wrote the paper.

Edited by David Chandler, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved June 17, 2009

quinta-feira, julho 30, 2009

Little-known Protein Found To Be Key Player in Building and Maintaining Healthy Cells

ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) — Italian and U.S. biologists have report that a little-understood protein previously implicated in a rare genetic disorder plays an unexpected and critical role in building and maintaining healthy cells. Even more surprising, their report in the journal Nature shows that the protein, called "atlastin," does its work by fusing intracellular membranes in a previously undocumented way.

"If you'd asked me a year ago whether this was possible, I would have said, 'No,'" said study co-author James McNew, associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University. "In fact, that's exactly what I told (co-author) Andrea Daga when we first spoke about the idea a year ago."

Fluorescent markers show the interconnected web of tubes and compartments in the endoplasmic reticulum, the critical part of cells that the protein atlastin helps build and maintain. (Credit: A. Daga/Medea Scientific Institute)

McNew has spent the past 15 years studying SNARE proteins, a specialized family of proteins that carries out membrane fusion. It's a vital process that happens thousands of times a second in every cell of our bodies.

"It is fitting that the discovery of a new protein capable of fusing membranes comes 10 years after the demonstration that SNAREs can fuse lipid bilayers," said Daga, a researcher at the Eugenio Medea Scientific Institute in Conegliano, Italy.

In the new study, Daga's and McNew's research teams used fruit flies to study how atlastin functions. The atlastin in fruit flies is very similar to the human version of the protein and serves the same function.

"Prior to this, there were only two defined ways in which you could take biological membranes and put them together in a specific way," said McNew, a faculty investigator at Rice's BioScience Resesarch Collaborative. "Atlastin is the third, and it's the only one that requires enzymatic activity, so it's distinctly different."...

Cell Press and Elsevier have launched a project called Article of the Future that is an ongoing collaboration with the scientific community to redefine how the scientific article is presented online. The project's goal is to take full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques. We have developed prototypes for two articles from Cell to demonstrate initial concepts and get feedback from the scientific community.

KEY FEATURES OF THE PROTOTYPES:

A hierarchical presentation of text and figures so that readers can elect to drill down through the layers of content based on their level of expertise and interest. This organizational structure is a significant departure from the linear-based organization of a traditional print-based article in incorporating the core text and supplemental material within a single unified structure.

A graphical abstract allows readers to quickly gain an understanding of the main take-home message of the paper. The graphical abstract is intended to encourage browsing, promote interdisciplinary scholarship and help readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.

Research highlights provide a bulleted list of the key results of the article.

Author-Affiliation highlighting makes it easy to see an author’s affiliations and all authors from the same affiliation.

A figure that contains clickable areas so that it can be used as a navigation mechanism to directly access specific sub-sections of the results and figures.

Integrated audio and video let authors present the context of their article via an interview or video presentation and allow animations to be displayed more effectively.

The Experimental Procedures section contains alternate views allowing readers to see a summary or the full details necessary to replicate the experiment.

A new approach to displaying figures allows the reader to identify quickly which figures they are interested in and then drill down through related supplemental figures. All supplemental figures are displayed individually and directly linked to the main figure to which they are related.

Real-time reference analyses provide a rich environment to explore the content of the article via the list of citations.

In this chapter, we reflect on the concept of Meaning-Based Natural Intelligence - a fundamental trait of Life shared by all organisms, from bacteria to humans, associated with: semantic and pragmatic communication, assignment and generation of meaning, formation of self-identity and of associated identity (i.e., of the group the individual belongs to), identification of natural intelligence, intentional behavior, decision-making and intentionally designed self-alterations. These features place the Meaning-Based natural Intelligence beyond the realm of Information-based Artificial Intelligence. Hence, organisms are beyond man-made pre-designed machinery and are distinguishable from non-living systems.

Our chain of reasoning begins with the simple distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic contextual causations for acquiring intelligence. The first, associated with natural intelligence, is required for the survival of the organism (the biotic system) that generates it.

In contrast, artificial intelligence is implemented externally to fulfill a purpose for the benefit of the organism that engineered the “Intelligent Machinery”. We explicitly propose that the ability to assign contextual meaning to externally gathered information is an essential requirement for survival, as it gives the organism the freedom of contextual decision-making.

By contextual, we mean relating to the external and internal states of the organism and the internally stored ontogenetic knowledge it has generated. We present the view that contextual interpretation of information and consequent decision-making are two fundamentals of natural intelligence that any living creature must have.

A distinction between extraction of information from data vs. extraction of meaning from information is drawn while trying to avoid the traps and pitfalls of the “meaning of meaning” and the “emergence of meaning” paradoxes. The assignment of meaning (internal interpretation) is associated with identifying correlations in the information according to the internal state of the organism, its external conditions and its purpose in gathering the information. Viewed this way, the assignment of meaning implies the existence of intrinsic meaning, against which the external information can be evaluated for extraction of meaning.

This leads to the recognition that the organism has self-identity. We present the view that the essential differences between natural intelligence and artificial intelligence are a testable reality, untested and ignored since it had been wronglyperceived as inconsistent with the foundations of physics. We propose that the inconsistency arises within the current, gene-network picture of the Neo-Darwinian paradigm (that regards organisms as equivalent to a Turing machine) and not from in principle contradiction with physical reality. Once the ontological reality of organisms’ natural intelligence is verified, a paradigm shift should be considered, where inter- and intra-cellular communication and genome plasticity (based on junk DNA” and the abundance of transposable elements) play crucial roles. In this new paradigm, communication and gene plasticity might be able to sustain the organisms with regulated freedom of choice between different available responses.

There have been many attempts to attribute the cognitive abilities of organisms (e.g., consciousness) to underlying quantum-mechanical mechanisms, which can directly affect the ”mechanical” parts of the organism (i.e., atomic and molecular excitations) despite thermal noise. Here, organisms are viewed as continuously self-organizing open systems that store past information, external and internal. These features enable the macroscopic organisms to have features analogous to some features in quantum mechanical systems. Yet, they are essentially different and should not be mistaken to be a direct reflection of quantum effects.

On the conceptual level, the analogy is very useful as it can lead to some insights from the knowledge of quantum mechanics. We show, for example, how it enables to metaphorically bridge between the Aharonov-Vaidman and Aharonov-Albert-Vaidman concepts of Protective and Weak Measurements in quantum mechanics (no destruction of the quantum state) with Ben Jacob’s concept of Weak-Stress Measurements, (e.g., exposure to non-lethal levels of antibiotic) in the study of organisms. We also reflect on the metaphoric analogy between Aharonov-Anandan-Popescue-Vaidman Quantum Time-Translation Machine and the ability of an external observer to deduce on an organism’s decision-making vs. arbitrary fluctuations. Inspired by the concept of Quantum Non-Demolition measurements we propose to use biofluoremetry (the use of bio-compatible fluorescent molecules to study intracellular spatio-temporal organization and functional correlations) as a future methodology of Intracellular Non-Demolition Measurements. We propose that the latter, performed during Weak-Stress Measurements of the organism, can provide proper schemata to test the special features associated with natural intelligence.

Funding: AM received funding from the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin.

* E-mail: axel.meyer@uni-konstanz.de

¶ Axel Meyer is currently a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin.

In Germany, Charles Darwin's thinking was accepted very quickly after the publication of On the Origin of Species in November, 1859. This was due, in no small measure, to the fact that a translation by the noted German paleontologist Heinrich Georg Bronn appeared in April, 1860, only months after the original publication [1]. Bronn's own research led him to several insights that paralleled those of Darwin, resulting in a translation that was quite liberal and included the addition of numerous footnotes; but perhaps most importantly, Bronn added a new final chapter (chapter 15) to Darwin's book [2]. In these final notes, Bronn summarized his assessments of and conclusions on Darwin's Origin in 26 pages [2]. He outlined what he thought Darwin had meant to say, partly reinterpreted it, and critiqued it. Darwin welcomed this discussion, and 18 letters were exchanged between the two men. In subsequent editions of Origin, Darwin developed his theory further through such feedback. Bronn's critical epilogue was partly inspired by his adherence to an idealistic—even romantic—and teleological Naturphilosophie that viewed evolution as a progressive development toward perfection; this has at least been long thought, explaining why Bronn used the word, in both text and title of the translation, vervollkommnet (perfected) for Darwin's word “favored.” Bronn also freely translated Darwin's “struggle for existence” into Kampf ums Dasein, which might be best translated back into English as “fight for existence or life,” a phrase that Darwin himself was not entirely happy with. New interpretations of Bronn's work and his influence on Ernst Haeckel and evolutionary thought in Germany are presented in the new book by Sander Gliboff, H. G. Bronn, Ernst Haeckel, and the Origins of German Darwinism: A Study in Translation and Transformation [3].

Haeckel, who was the most influential don of German zoology for several decades, probably read Darwin's Origin in German during his PhD work in Jena, since his command of English was not particularly good. The main reason why all of this is of greater, even political, interest beyond issues in the history of science, is that Ernst Haeckel is widely seen—although this is disputed among historians of science—to be in an unholy intellectual line from Darwin to social Darwinism and eugenics in the early twentieth century, eventually leading to fascism in Nazi Germany. Creationist and intelligent-design advocates worldwide tirelessly perpetuate this purported but largely unsubstantiated connection between Darwin, Haeckel, and Hitler [4]. Such efforts are particularly and unnecessarily divisive in this “Darwin year,” when we celebrate not only the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin, but also Darwin's 200th birthday. Furthermore, they do not do justice to Haeckel's understanding of Darwinian evolution by natural selection with all its unpredictability, but, more importantly, seem to aim to further undermine the acceptance of evolution by an often still surprisingly skeptical lay audience.

Haeckel was, by far, the most successful popularizer of science for more than a generation in Germany [5],[6]. His books were printed in large numbers, translated into several languages, and strongly influenced scientists and layman alike [7],[8]. Haeckel idealized Darwin. He dedicated his seminal work “Generelle Morphologie” to Darwin (as well as to his teacher Carl Gegenbaur, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck) and visited him in Down House in August of 1866. When Darwin was presented with a copy of Haeckel's book, he received it with gracious thanks and remarked (in a letter to Haeckel from 18 August 1866), “You confer on my book, the Origin of Species, the most magnificent eulogium which it has ever received.” Haeckel misunderstood many aspects of Darwin's ideas, and perhaps his typical German quest for laws of nature was ill-founded. Nonetheless, he was instrumental in propagating the principle of evolution by natural selection to the then very influential community of German biologists that had long adhered to lamarckian ideas.

Bronn died in 1862, and later editions of Darwin's seminal book were translated into German by Julius Victor Carus. A son of Friedrich Emil Suchsland, a publisher of Darwin's translations, asked Darwin for permission for a new translation of later editions of the Origin, claiming that his theory had been widely misunderstood in Germany because of shortcomings in the early translation by Bronn. This interpretation of Bronn's skewed understanding of Darwin, and its effects on Haeckel's own misunderstanding, continued in the history of science until recently [9],[10].

Gliboff's new book [3] clarifies that, although Bronn never completely accepted Darwin's idea of species transformation, he did immediately recognize that Darwin's Origin was a huge advance toward a more comprehensive science of life, which Bronn himself had long sought to establish. Gliboff's book is a very readable, concise, and an important contribution that will help to rectify some entrenched misunderstandings about the history of evolutionary thinking in Germany. It needs to be said, however, that Gliboff almost summarily ignores a large body of work from German scholars on these aspects of the history of evolutionary biology. It was Thomas Junker and others [9],[10] who clarified the historical role of Bronn's translation of Darwin on the acceptance and perception of Darwinian evolution in German. Also, other researchers from Jena (where Haeckel spent 47 years of his career as professor), such as Uwe Hoßfeld, deserve more credit than Gliboff gives them [7],[11]. The omission of the insights of these scholars detracts from the impact that this book should have.

Gliboff makes an important contribution by pointing out that Bronn's liberal translation of Darwin altered the precise meanings of Victorian English words to fit a contemporaneous German sensibility. Much of this can be attributed to Bronn's interpretations of Darwin. Bronn had been thinking along lines perhaps parallel to Darwin's, aiming to modify Darwin where he thought he knew better than Darwin himself. Bronn and Haeckel initially had difficulty dealing with Darwin's theory because it described variation, diversity, and changes that did not seem to obey predictions from “natural laws”. However, their work—just like the insights of the following generations of evolutionary biologists—extended Darwin's theory beyond that which was known to Darwin himself and led to a healthy discourse among different interpretations. One should not forget that Darwin's thoughts were only the beginning of modern evolutionary biology. A huge amount of research in evolutionary biology in the 150 years since the publication of Origin added, extended, and modified Darwin's initial thinking—as should be expected in any vibrant scientific discipline—but did not contradict the core tenets of Darwin.